Natural Moms Podcast #101
October 20, 2008
his week I am talking with Barbara Nicholson, co-founder of Attachment Parenting International.
Barbara is talking about Attachment Parenting Month, what API is all about, the release of their book “Attached at the Heart”.
She also gives us tidbits of the recent Teleseminar with Martha Sears and the upcoming Peggy O’Mara interview
A transcript of this interview appears below if you prefer reading.
P.S. You’ll notice the show seems a little “unfinished” this week. I’m having some computer issues and my desktop is in the shop being repaired, so I went low tech this week to get this audio to you instead of waiting until I got my equipment back 
Winner of the recent giveaways:
Cycle Beads: Emily B
Land Organic Gift Set: Mary J
Thanks ladies, look for my email!
Now up for grabs:
The Birth in a Box from Waterbirth International. Birth in a Box is a birthing tub kit so if you are preparing for an upcoming home birth leave a comment below before Wednesday October 22 at midnight Eastern!
(Note: The winner for this contest has been chosen, thanks for participating.)
Carrie: You are back with Carrie at Natural Mom’s Talk Radio and I am speaking with Barbara Nicholson, co-founder of Attachment Parenting International. Hello Barbara.
Barbara: Good morning Carrie.
Carrie: So this month is Attachment Parenting month.
Barbara: Yes.
C: That’s exciting.
B: Yes we have claimed it as our own.
C: Yes, I mean there is a month for pumpkins and there is a month for anti-procrastination surely there should be a month for attachment parenting! So we’re going to talk today about what API is all about. We did have Lysa Parker on the program two years ago (note: you can download this audio file here). But you know for my newer listeners who may not be familiar with your organization, we’ll talk real briefly what you’re all about. But also some of the cool things you have going on this month and your new book that is coming out soon.
photo credit: Ja-nelle
B: Well yes, we are excited about many things. Just briefly, our organization has been around for about fourteen years now. AttachmentParenting.org is our website. We have support groups all around the country and internationally. It’s really a safe place for parents to come and learn about nurturing parenting, positive discipline, and resources in your own community.
So our leaders that lead the group are accredited through our organization, and they are parents of at least an eighteen month old toddler. The leaders are really there just to facilitate the discussion, they are not there as parenting experts by any means.
But usually the families that come to AP Support Group meetings are very diverse, from working moms to stay at home parents, stay at home dads; I mean they are a wide variety of families that come. So we’re really here just to help parents learn about positive solutions. Also we have a wonderful network of professionals that lend their expertise to the organization.
C: Awesome.
B: Any other questions about API?
C: No that about sums it up. I think most of the listeners are familiar with the concept of Attachment Parenting. So tell us what you have going on in the special this month. I know by the time this interview is up on the site, we will have missed the first teleseminar with Martha Sears but I understand you have another one coming up at the end of October.
B: Yes, October 27 with Peggy O’Mara, and you can learn a lot more about this on our website. Just go to AttachmentParenting.org, and it will have all the information about this wonderful teleseminar with Peggy. She’ll be talking about just some of the myths of parenting and just creating that strong connection with your child. She is such a wonderful resource for the natural parenting community. She has written many books and we’re just so excited about this interview with her.
This is really to celebrate Attachment Parenting month which is the entire month of October. We have been real excited to see how our groups have been finding creative ways to get the word out in their communities about Attachment Parenting through different events, picnics and all kinds of creative ideas to connect with families and give them that support.
And Dr. Sears has been celebrating Attachment Parenting month on his website. There are several organizations that are kind of sistering with us or brothering with us, so we’re really hoping that this is our first month to do this, that over the years this movement will grow, and that October will be celebrated by many organizations and groups around the world.
Not necessarily just about what we would call Attachment Parenting, but just the joys of parenting and getting the more positive message out about “yes parenting is an incredibly challenging job sometimes, but basically when we practice this type of connection and nurturing, we learn so much about ourselves as human beings and how this is really what’s going to change the society”.
It always comes back down to what goes on in the home will reflect in the whole culture. That’s how you change the culture, not from the top down. It’s always from that basic unit of familial love and connection really changes the culture.
C: I can’t remember where I saw this quote but I thought it was very poignant, it said, “Love your children not so they will love you back but so that they will love your grandchildren.”
B: Wow!
C: I thought that was really good.
B: Very profound, I like that; I would like to have that on a bumper sticker.
C: Maybe I’ll Google it and try to find out who said it so I can give somebody you know proper…
B: Credit.
L: Yes, thank you, proper credit. So like I said I missed the teleseminar with Martha Sears that she talked about the myths of perfect mothering. Can you give us a couple of quick sound bites from that? I bet that was an amazing discussion.
B: Well the good news is you can get it from our website, you can just download it.
C: Oh great, okay I was going to ask that, wonderful.
B: Yes, because it was incredible. Martha is just the most giving self revealing gift to all of us. She really has been through some tremendous self reflection over the last several years and shares with us her journey. She has suffered from depression, bouts of depression; she realizes she has been struggling with this her whole life. But because of her capacity to nurture her children, and to see the thing is the Prolactin and Oxytocin I got from breast feeding that really kind of kept me in a more stable place.
C: Yes.
B: And it wasn’t until I weaned my last child that I realized wow, I don’t have that natural anti-depressant anymore. She was dealing with a lot of issues from her own childhood as we all do. She had some pretty significant losses in her early childhood. Her father died when she was young, and her mother was really struggling; so she realized that now is the time in my life where I have really got to get serious, about getting some therapy and getting some help.
She is a wonderful model to all of us, as you notice what your red flags are in your life. Notice what your red flags are, and if you find yourself repeating behaviors that you want to stop, and you don’t seem to have the capacity to do it on your own through reading books or talking to friends or going to a support group meeting, if that’s not enough then please, talk to a counselor. Take care of yourself. She kept using the analogy of the oxygen mask coming down in the airplane.
C: Yes that’s a good one.
B: And she says, “How many of us would put the oxygen mask on our child first?” She said that’s what I was doing, I wasn’t putting the oxygen mask on myself so I could take care of my children properly.” And not that she harmed them or anything, but she realizes as they got older and were leaving the nest; now I’ve really got to take care of myself.
C: Yes.
B: But for many of us we need to be doing this all along that journey. Perhaps because she had a big family, she had her husband Bill, she had so much support through La Leche League and many other support networks, and wonderful friends and her church that kept her going. But for so many people who don’t have that, they really should seek professional help and nurture yourself.
C: Yes, well I’m glad that’s available to download on your site; I would like to listen to that myself. Okay so tell us please about your upcoming book.
B: Oh we’re so excited. After we’ve been an organization now for fourteen years, but Lisa and I have been working on this book since we first met. In so many ways we have had so many conversations about the big picture. What is the big picture, why is it so important that we nurture our children?
Like I was saying earlier, we were really wanting to not only talk about the principles of parenting that we expound as an organization, our eight principles of parenting, but to give parents the background of attachment theory, where does this come from. And to look at different cultures around the world and the types of parenting that is practiced reflex, how violent a culture is; there is so much information out there so we tried to condense it into a volume, that wouldn’t be just overwhelming for parents.
It’s a very practical book, it has the eight principles and lots and lots of research and resources for parents. From websites and DVD’s to books, all these things that we have been collecting for all these years, we tried to pack it into this one book.
But it’s also for anyone who is interested; you don’t even have to read these chapters if you’re just desperate for parenting information. If you would like to delve a little bit more into the big picture and the cultural studies, and to look at these different parenting theories and how they have influenced modern western culture especially, we’re hoping that it will be a really interesting read, if you want to go into a little more depth. So it’s a little bit of both, it’s the practical application and the theories and it all boils down to really a parent being affirmed and listening to their heart.
So that’s the title of the book; Attached at the Heart, Eight Proven Parenting Principles for Raising Connected and Compassionate Children.
C: Well that sounds great. When you were talking about some of the science around the attachment theory, I remember a book I read that just fascinated me, that talked about the way that generations have changed, because of the popular parenting philosophy of the time. That was very fascinating and a lot of people need that information. For whatever reason, they may not be able to trust their own instinct or what have you, and they like to have that information so that is great. But you know I think also so important is that parents seek out support from groups like API, and spend time with other parents who are doing that, because you can have all the good information in the world, and you can listen to your heart and that kind of thing; but if you don’t have that support of other people who are living that way you’re especially challenged.
B: Absolutely.
C: So that’s what so fantastic that you have the groups available.
B: Well that is an absolute critical component, I’m so glad you brought that up because that’s why we started the organization. That’s why it took us so long to write the book. We really wanted to get that foundation out there first. How in the world can a parent survive without the connection of community, and we really, really lost that in our culture because we are so spread out, and we often move away from extended family. Even if we live near extended family, if they are not a nurturing family then you still have to create that community.
So it’s really about a parent raising their consciousness, first of all ideally before they even have their baby. That would be the ideal that we talk about in the book, if you’ve been considering getting pregnant or adopting a baby, then now is the time to start really reflecting on what kind of household do you want to have. What was positive from your childhood, what was negative, what are the things that you feel like you need help with and you don’t want to repeat? You start building that network of support. For me and Lisa, that was La Leche League, We were so blessed that we were guided to go to La Leche meetings, thinking it was just about getting breast feeding information. Then you were introduced to this whole nurturing group of women who were really a model for us as oh, that’s what I want to be when I grow up.
C: Yes, absolutely.
B: I want to be this calm centered mother who feels empowered and so proud of being a mother.
C: And actually enjoying her children, which seems to be a foreign concept with so many people in our society.
B: That’s right.
C: That you could actually enjoy your children and find them fascinating and interesting and want their companionship.
b: Exactly; and going to La Leche League conferences was another huge gift to us, because it expanded the mission of mothering through breast feeding into this whole parenting world; and this is when we were introduced to Dr. Sears and Martha Sears and their books, and a whole world of parenting books.
And then Lisa and I were educators, we were both teaching children with learning disabilities, so we were coming from that educational world, and seeing so many children who really didn’t have a “learning disability”, they were just not parented well. You know they were just not read to, they weren’t given encouragement, and so we were parenting these children the best we could in the classroom. We realized to really make this shift in the culture it has to start with the parents, it has to start when the parents have babies and young children to plant those seeds of you are the most important person in the child’s life, and I know our society gives lip service to that, but I didn’t really experience it or live it, until I was around a group of really highly nurturing people who had the skills and the strategies to practice positive discipline.
I was raised in Texas, everybody was spanking, using pretty harsh discipline growing up, and that was pretty much all I knew. Even though my mother didn’t do it that often I knew that each generation improves. My mother improved greatly from the way she was raised, and I know she would expect the same of me; and I’m expecting the same of my adult friends when they become parents.
So let’s learn from the wisdom of our elders. When we find someone that we really look up to, we admire their parenting, well then, pick their brain, talk to them, spend time with them and that’s what we want our Attachment Parenting Groups to be for parents. Your children can grow up together just like Lisa and I, and so many of my La Leche League friends, our children have all grown up together, they have stayed friends, it’s just been a wonderful journey; and we felt like API could be an extension of that.
We’ve been so thrilled how the founders of La Leche League have given us their blessing and encouragement to expand this parenting model to all parents. So whether you’re breast feeding or not, that’s another important thing I think that a lot of families don’t realize. We are a parenting organization for all parents, and just using the breast feeding as an example.
We have many bottle feeding families that come to our meetings for whatever reason, they are adoptive or they didn’t work out, and we’re one of the few organizations that really give them help in the importance of how to feed a baby with a bottle. You’re supposed to, you should switch sides for instance, you should always hold the baby; keep them in that same kind of breast feeding position, because that’s the distance that the babies eyes focus. No one is really telling this to bottle feeding parents, you see them propping bottles, or the baby as soon as they can hold a bottle themselves, and they do. …
C: Or not switching sides, I’m sure that’s something that most parents would never think of.
B: No, I certainly wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t had the experience of breast feeding I wouldn’t realize wow, this is the time you really connect with your baby, and you’re forced to do it when you are breast feeding. So I have a good friend who is a foster mother, and she was also a breast feeding mother; so when she gives a baby’s bottles she said, “I have such a deeper understanding now of how important it is that I be the one that gives the baby the bottle, and not just for convenience, pass him off to someone else, but because I want to create that connection with him, and that’s such a wonderful time. I think a bottle feeding parent needs to realize it’s time for you to sit down, put your feet up, not think I can just prop the bottle and go get the laundry done.” So it’s really a way for the parent to rest and have some down time also, it’s not just for the baby.
C: Right, absolutely. Well Barbara thank you so much for sharing what’s going on with Attachment Parenting International.
B: My pleasure.
C: I appreciate it very much.
B: Any time.
More Posts By Carrie:
- October is Attachment Parenting Month
- Attachment Parenting International Announces New Parenting Education Program
- Natural Moms Podcast #63
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10 Responses to “Natural Moms Podcast #101”
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